


Former American Idols Arrested in Drug-Fueled Snow-Shoveling, Break-Dancing Rampage

by Deastar



Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-06 16:29:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deastar/pseuds/Deastar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“Adam, can I please remind you that going on vacation in Iowa in December was your crazy idea in the first place?”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Former American Idols Arrested in Drug-Fueled Snow-Shoveling, Break-Dancing Rampage

**Author's Note:**

> Snow-shoveling sucks, but imagining Kris and Adam shoveling instead of me makes it better. Also, Iowa rocks. Y’all should come visit. Just not in the winter. Beta-read by [](http://preromantics.livejournal.com/profile)[**preromantics**](http://preromantics.livejournal.com/) aka The Artist Formerly Known As colorofsmoke, to whom I am very grateful!

“Oh, _hell_ no,” Adam moans, staring blankly at the metric ton of snow sticking to his shovel. He whacks the shovel against the pavement of the driveway, and several pounds of snow obediently fall off of the shovel onto the ground – totally covering up the nice patch of concrete he had so carefully cleared off.

“Unreal!” he mutters, scraping up the imposing pile of snow and chucking it behind him on what used to be the lawn before this blizzard turned it into a frozen wasteland. Balefully, Adam glares at the rest of the driveway – there’s maybe eight square feet cleared, even though he and Kris have been shoveling for fifteen minutes already. Every time Adam scoops up a pile of snow, it sticks to his shovel like glue, and the only way to get it to come off is to dump it all over the patch of driveway he’s been trying to clear in the first place.

Out of the corner of his eye, Adam sees Kris do something that looks like a kind of demented hillbilly dance move.

“What the hell was that?” Adam exclaims, and Kris shrugs.

“Gotta get the snow off somehow,” he yells. As Adam watches, Kris digs his shovel into the snow, levers his mounded snow shovel over the side of the lawn, and kicks the back of the shovel blade with his boot, sending the sticky snow tumbling off safely into the snow pile.

“Oh my god, you’re a genius,” Adam marvels. He collects his own shovelful, then swings it out to the side and aims the toe of his boot at the edge of the shovel.

Five seconds later, flat on his back on the snowy pavement, Adam says, “Ow,” and then, “Stop laughing, you little shit. It’s not as easy as you make it look!”

Kris is still cracking up, but he helpfully offers Adam a hand and pulls him to his feet.

“I’m afraid,” Kris wheezes between bouts of laughter, “that if I don’t stop laughing, tears will start running down my face, and they’ll freeze.”

“You would deserve it,” Adam grumbles, scooping up more snow and trying the kicking trick again. He doesn’t end up on the ground this time, but he still feels like a complete idiot and knows that he must look like a crazy person. Kris seems to have a very comfortable rhythm going – scoop, swing, kick, turn; scoop, swing, kick, turn. When Adam tries to imitate him, he just ends up looking like he’s doing some weird combination of performance art and the Funky Chicken.

“The neighbors are going to see this!” he calls, feeling the burn of unfamiliar muscles in his lower back and his shoulders. “One of them is going to have a cell phone camera, and this is going to be all over the internet! The headline in the local paper is going to be ‘Former American Idols Arrested in Drug-Fueled Snow-Shoveling, Break-Dancing Rampage!’”

“Adam,” Kris says gently, resting the blade of his shovel on the ground in front of Adam’s feet and leaning in so that the two of them are face to face. “Adam, can I please remind you that going on vacation in _Iowa_ in _December_ was _your_ crazy idea in the first place?”

“I thought it would be nice!” Adam protests. “Picturesque scenery, no paparazzi…” He looks away, feeling stupid. “You didn’t have to come.”

“Don’t be silly,” Kris says, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world, “you know I want to be wherever you are.”

“Thanks,” Adam whispers – he’s taking the snow blowing in his eyes as his excuse for how embarrassingly choked up he is.

“Just… Iowa?” Kris asks, turning back to the shoveling.

“It’s picturesque,” Adam insists weakly – that’s not actually why, but the real reason is still supposed to be a secret, although it seems pretty ridiculous in the face of the freezing cold break-dancing manual labor. “I thought the snow would be… decorative. Festive. I didn’t know we were required by law to shovel it!”

“Your friends didn’t mention that when they said you could borrow their house?” Kris asks skeptically – Adam kicks his shovel particularly viciously. “No,” he says sullenly – he’d had other things on his mind when he’d asked Laura and Colby if he and Kris could vacation in their summer house for a couple of weeks, get some alone time, have a romantic holiday.

“Look how far along we are already,” Kris calls encouragingly – it’s true that they have half the driveway clear now, but then again, Adam’s back will never be the same, and the boots he’s wearing were intended more for fashion emergencies than severe weather emergencies.

“This sucks,” Adam mutters, swinging a leg out in what he hopes looks like a cool judo kick, but which probably looks more like he’s trying to lay an egg.

He sees the flashing orange light of a snowplow in the distance and cheers. As the snowplow trundles along, he gives the driver an excited wave – they will not be stranded with no access to Chinese takeout and proper skincare! – which turns into a raised middle finger when the big truck blithely dumps a megaton of dirty street snow onto the end of their driveway, and then rolls unconcernedly away.

“Aren’t Iowans supposed to be nice?” he complains – Kris rolls his eyes and says, “The snow from the street has to end up somewhere, Adam. The man’s just doing his job.”

A strong gust of wind sweeps through the yard, carrying snow with it, and Kris cries out and covers his eyes.

“Damn it,” he says, pawing off his gloves and prodding around his eyes. “My contacts–”

And what Adam has learned, from three years of being in love with Kris, and one year of finally having Kris for his very own, and watching Kris put up with his shit, and figuring out what it takes to turn love into something strong enough to live in, is that these are the moments when you find out if all your love songs and Ferris wheels and grand gestures are bullshit, or if you really deserve the love you’ve claimed.

“Hey,” Adam says gently, trudging over to where Kris is still rubbing at his eyes. He wraps a frozen arm around Kris’ shoulders and says, “Go inside and take your contacts out. I’ll finish up out here.”

“You don’t have to,” Kris mumbles, but he’s blinking a thousand times a minute and his eyes are watering pathetically.

“Go,” Adam says, grinning, pushing Kris gently toward the open garage door. “I’ll perfect my spastic chicken impression.”

When Adam hears the garage door shut behind Kris, he turns to survey what looks like a half-mile of drifted snow and says grimly, “I am one fierce bitch. The quiz I took in Cosmo says so. This snow is no match for Adam fucking Lambert. This snow is _mine._”

And then, sighing, he settles into a rhythm – scoop, swing, flail like a fucking moron, get a bunch of snow in the face, turn back around, do it all over again.

~*~

Inside the house, it’s blessedly warm, and Kris moans gratefully when he opens the door to the bathroom and feels the wave of heat wash over him. He fumbles both of his contacts out, then gropes blindly for the bottle of contact solution, which is always two inches away from his contact case, except when he really needs it, and then it’s always inexplicably missing and generally turns up inside one of his shoes or something.

Sighing, Kris slips on his glasses and starts the hunt for his contact solution. He checks his shoes first, which pretty much guarantees that he won’t find it there – the bottle is always in the last place he looks. He turns each and every one of the drawers in the bathroom and the bedroom inside out, and ransacks his own luggage before turning to Adam’s. Kris feels completely awful about leaving Adam to shovel the rest of the driveway on his own, and all he wants is to find the stupid bottle so he can get back out there as soon as possible and help Adam with the snow.

After wading through three boxes of condoms, a packet of extra boot laces, a 3-oz bottle of hairspray marked “In Case of Emergency,” a pair of handcuffs, a paperback copy of “The Importance of Being Earnest,” and, for some reason, a stuffed pink flamingo, Kris’s hand closes around something small and velvety which he can’t identify. He pulls it out and has to sit down abruptly – it’s a little black box, like the one he carried around in his jacket pocket for weeks before working up the nerve to ask Katy to marry him.

He opens the box, and there it is – a plain gold band in a man’s size. It’s incredibly simple – there’s no inscription, no filigree, no gemstones, just a regular, ordinary gold ring. It looks nothing like any ring that Adam would ever wear himself – this ring could not be any more clearly for Kris if it had a giant neon sign hanging above it, flashing “Reserved for Kristopher Allen.”

“Iowa,” Kris says softly, and a lot of things suddenly become clear.

Carefully, Kris closes the box, and tries to think of what to do. Probably Adam has a plan. Probably it is very grand and romantic.

Kris walks to the window and pulls aside the curtain – outside, in the blowing snow, a tall figure is stoically shoveling away, pausing every once in a while to awkwardly swing a leg outward to kick free a pile of snow from the shovel blade. Kris can’t imagine any candlelight dinner or bottle of wine or serenade that could make him feel anything more for this man than he feels right now.

Walking to the kitchen, Kris heats some milk over the stove and pours it into two mugs, stirring in the hot chocolate mix and a handful of marshmallows. He can feel the weight of the ring box in the pocket of his hoodie.

He’s timed it just right – the door slams just as Kris sets the two mugs down on the kitchen table. He jogs downstairs to help Adam take off his wet scarf and gloves and to hang them up to dry in the laundry room.

Adam sits down on the steps, wrestling off his boots and bemoaning his soggy socks – wordlessly, Kris peels off Adam’s cold socks, which have probably given him a bad chill, and pulls on some new, warm socks that he rescued from the dryer.

“I made you some hot chocolate,” he mentions and Adam’s eyes open wide and he blurts, “I love you _so much_.”

“I know,” Kris says quietly.

Adam looks at him weirdly. “Thanks, Han Solo,” he says dryly, and Kris smiles.

“I meant, ‘I love you, too,’” he says, and Adam cups one chilly hand around Kris’ cheek and draws him in for a slow, meandering kiss.

“Hot chocolate,” Kris reminds him, and Adam squeaks and runs up the stairs to the kitchen, where Kris finds him blowing on it frantically. Adam gives him a pitiful look and says, “It’s hot.”

“_Hot_ chocolate,” Kris says for the third time, and sits down to sip his own drink.

“So. Iowa,” he says, and Adam rolls his eyes.

“If I had known about their draconian snow-clearing laws, believe me, I’d have thought twice before—”

Carefully, Kris pulls the ring box out of his pocket and sets it on the table. It makes a surprisingly loud sound for such a small thing.

“Nononono,” Adam says loudly, looking panicked and holding out his hands as if a herd of wildebeest is headed straight at him. “No. I have a plan. It’s a really good plan. There are bells, and horses, and bells on horses. Kitchen tables are not involved.”

“Bells?” Kris asks, in spite of himself, and Adam nods vigorously.

“Lots of bells. But tastefully. It’s for you,” Adam adds, as if that explains everything, and Kris thinks about the simple, traditional ring in its little black box. “I know it bothers you,” Adam continues, more quietly, “not being married. I know you miss… that part of it. And since the voters of California don’t seem like they’re going to pull their heads out of their asses any time soon, I thought—” He shrugs. “Iowa.”

“What about you?” Kris asks, and Adam looks honestly confused.

“Me?”

“I do miss being married,” Kris admits. “But you don’t. This ring is… it’s for me. It’s obviously made to be something that I would wear, that _I_ would like. But it worries me a little that there’s no box with… with a big, flashy, fierce _Adam _ring.”

Adam looks at him. And looks at him. And looks some more.

Finally, he says, “Well, it’s good I’m not marrying you for your brains.”

“Hey!” Kris punches him in the shoulder, but Adam just shakes his head, looking kind of amazed.

“Okay, I’m going to tackle the metaphor first, because… Kris, there are a lot of crazy things that I would totally do just to make you happy. But oh my god, _getting married_, like, for the whole rest of my _life_, is not one of them. I want to marry you because I want to marry you, and I don’t care if it’s a bourgeois traditionalist conservative heteronormative institution— which it totally doesn’t have to be, by the way, marriage is whatever you make it—it’s the bourgeois traditionalist conservative heteronomative institution I want to have _with you_,” Adam concludes. “Also,” he adds, “on a more practical note, I wear rings all the time, so it wouldn’t be as meaningful. I was thinking a tattoo.”

Kris takes a big gulp of his hot chocolate, and blames that for the warm feeling in his chest.

“No on the tattoo,” he says first, trying to keep his voice steady. “But yes. Yes.”

The kitchen chairs aren’t that big, but neither is Kris, and he fits on Adam’s lap perfectly when he winds his arms around Adam’s neck and kisses him softly, tasting chocolate.

“My sleigh ride—” Adam mumbles between kisses. “—my snow angels, and all the neighborhood kids I paid to sing ‘Silent Night,’ and the special Christmas cookies my Jewish mother baked just so that they would spell out ‘marry me—’”

Kris wants to make a crack about their different definitions of the word “tasteful,” but it honestly sounds pretty adorable.

“You can have your sleigh ride,” he murmurs into Adam’s neck. “I’ll think of it as an early honeymoon.”

“Mm…” Adam purrs happily. “I like that.”

“And on Saturday, when it snows again, you can pay some of those neighborhood kids to shovel out our driveway.”

“Maybe I am marrying you for your brains,” Adam says, grinning, and they make out like teenagers while the hot chocolate goes cold on the table, and the wind howls outside the window.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] Former American Idols Arrested in Drug-Fueled Snow-Shoveling, Break-Dancing Rampage](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5701651) by [exmanhater](https://archiveofourown.org/users/exmanhater/pseuds/exmanhater)




End file.
